Downtown Topeka to revisit '80s music Saturday

Rockin' the Reunion just one concert in another music-packed weekend

Nashville-based The Big Rock Show - from left, Dean Workman, Matt Green, Ryan Cook, Paul Taylor and Jeremy Ashrock - will perform at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the 100 block of S.W 8th as the headlining act of Rockin' the Reunion: '80s on 8th Street, a street concert. Workman and Cook are former Topekans.

Shown posing with the members of Kiss, the Nashville-based The Big Rock Show - from left, Matt Green, Dean Workman, Jeremy Asbrock, Ryan Cook and Paul Taylor - will perform at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the 100 block of S.W 8th as the headlining act of Rockin' the Reunion: '80s on 8th Street, a street concert. Workman and Cook are former Topekans.

Flutist Jennifer Gunn, left, and oboist Alex Klein rehearse with the Sunflower Music Festival chamber orchestra, which will perform the festival's closing concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in White Concert Hall. The woodwind players also will be part of an octet that will perform at the Sunflower's last chamber ensemble program at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Downtown Topeka will flash back to the 1980s on Saturday night at Rockin’ the Reunion, one event of another music-jammed weekend in the Kansas capital.

Also on tap this weekend will be the final three concerts of the 28th annual Sunflower Music Festival, a show by R&B singer Lloyd, a Last Minute Folk concert by Heather Styka, blues gigs by guitarist Samantha Fish and harmonica player Brandon Santini, and marches by Marshall’s Civic Band and the Kansas Army National Guard’s 35th Infantry Division Band.

Rockin’ the Reunion: ’80s on 8th Street is the idea of Jared Beam, who graduated in 1989 from Seaman High School and wanted to organize a blowout of a 25th class reunion. The notion grew into a citywide event celebrating the music Beam and his contemporaries were listening to on the radio and still enjoy today.

Beam knew a couple of his fellow Seaman alumni — Seaman class of ’89 member Dean Workman and Ryan Cook, who graduated in 1988 — were still performing ’80s music in a Nashville, Tenn.-based group called The Big Rock Show, which performs the music of Ratt, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and other hair bands.

“If you come to the show, you’ll know every song we play,” Cook said by telephone Wednesday from the airport in Nashville, where he and Workman were awaiting their flight that had been delayed by bad weather in other parts of the country.

Cook said Saturday’s show will be the first time he and Workman have performed together in Topeka since they were both in a garage band as pupils at Logan Junior High School. In high school, they were members of different rock bands: Cook in Heavy Duty and Workman in Vantzdiver.

“We played everywhere from Gage Park Amphitheater, to Magoo’s, to Sneakers, to the National Guard Armory, to Ag Hall, to Heritage Hall. Any place that had live music, we played it,” recalled Cook.

Cook and Workman lost track of one another when Cook got a record deal and moved to Los Angeles. Cook, who was guitarist and vocalist in Hair of the Dog, and, for a while replaced Dave “Snake” Sabo in on tour with Skid Row, reconnected with Workman when he relocated to Nashville and found his former classmate was a working musician there.

Eventually, they found themselves together in The Big Rock Show, which includes Jeremy Asbrock (The Shazam, Morning Wood), Matt Green and Paul Taylor (Alice Cooper, Steve Perry, Winger).

Beam saw the band perform a couple of years ago in Nashville and vowed he would get them back to Topeka to perform, which they will at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the 100 block of S.W. 8th.

Rockin’ the Reunion will get stared with a social hour from 5 to 7 p.m. when a contemporary high school band, A Horse Called Steven, which includes Christian Fast, Alex Frank, Will Hartner, Zach McGinty and Brock Mitchell, will warm up the crowd. The music will continue after The Big Rock Show leaves the stage, with Nucklehead Jones closing the show with their set that will begin at 10 p.m.

That popular Topeka band, which also play ’80s music, includes Seaman graduates Todd Breckenridge, Steve Case, Kenny Fields and Ron Fields. They also performed with Cook and Workman in junior high and high school.

General admission tickets are $8 in advance or $10 at the gates, which open at 5 p.m. Advance VIP tickets purchased for $15 in advance feature front-section seating, and reserved VIP tickets for $35 include seating at a table with a private beer garden and reserved rest room. Tickets can be purchased in advance through Brown Paper Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/600927. The event also has a Facebook page.

Also on tap musically this weekend are:

■ The 28th annual Sunflower Music Festival wraps up with a chamber ensemble concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday and the event-ending chamber orchestra concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, both in White Concert Hall on the campus of Washburn University. Ensembles drawn from the students of the festival’s Blanche Bryden High School Institute will play at 3 p.m. Saturday in the hall. Admission is free to all programs, and doors open an hour early for seating. See www.sunflowermusicfestival.org for concert details.

■ Nationally known R&B vocalist Lloyd will perform Friday night at the Eclipse Urban Lounge, 4117 S.W. Huntoon, where doors will open at 10 p.m. Tickets are $20 for general admission, $50 for VIP or $250 for a reserved table for four and a bottle of champagne. For more information call (785) 969-3391

■ Uncle Bo’s, the blues nightspot on the lower level of the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, 420 S.E. 6th, will feature Kansas-born, nationally known guitarist Samantha Fish and her band Friday night, and another rising star in the blues, harmonica player Brandon Santini and his group, on Saturday. The music gets started at 7:30 p.m. each night, and tickets are $10 to each show and sold at the door.

■ Singer, songwriter and poet Heather Styka, who was born in Chicago but lives in Maine, will perform a Last Minute Folk concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Scanland Hall of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Topeka, 4775 S.W. 21st. Doors open at 7 p.m., and tickets are $15 at the door or $12 in advance with a link to purchase them at the series website, www.uuft.org/lmf.

■ Marshall’s Civic Band, a Topeka institution, will perform its first concert of the season at 7 p.m. Sunday in the Gage Park Amphitheater. Steve Holloman will conduct the concert, which will feature his wife, Veronica, and their 6-year-old granddaughter, Brecken Murphy, singing highlights from the Disney animated feature film “Frozen.” The free program also will include marches, novelty tunes and a medley of Beatles tunes.

■ A second evening of free band music will be heard at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Garfield Park, 1600 N.E. Quincy, where the Kansas Army National Guard’s 35th Infantry Division Band will play a program of marches and other songs. Chief Warrant Officer Stephen J. Patterson, who also leads the North Topeka Community Band, commands and directs the military ensemble.